On the Sense of Smell and Her More Neglected Counterparts

There can be many things learned while working in a restaurant. Conveniently, it is an opportunity to test various delicacies and unique combinations that you would be unlikely otherwise to try. Many people, when they go out, choose to do so with a particular meal in mind, I know I do: burgers, cappuccinos, specials that cannot be made at home—however, the casseroles, the fillets and the bakes, which are your classic home-cooked meals—are nevertheless popular, if not more so than other regular specials. Here there is another world of interesting new recipes—homemade breads, our famous carrot cake, savoury cheesecakes, pork casseroles, falafels with tzatziki, smoked salmon salad with a horseradish dressing, rhubarb and ginger tart, duck in cherry, chicken in orange and Dijon mustard, and nothing, from the ‘burgers’ (served on Italian paninis) or the even the scrambled egg, is ordinary. As my boss says, “We don’t serve anything we don’t like.”

It has certainly helped my creativity when it comes to meals. I have discovered the mechanics of poaching eggs, the structuring of aesthetically pleasing dishes, experimenting with things that can be combined— like cottage cheese in cumin/coriander carrot soup—and things that cannot. There are lots of good recipes to be found in any home magazine, from great soups, to soft Rolo-cookies, and on the bbcgoodfood.com website which allows searches to be categorised by preparation time, low-GI, or dietary specifics.

The downside of course is having all these readily available. My palate is satisfied, but my waistline is beginning to feel bashful. So I must expound on the marvels of the sense of smell:

Smell, apart from making up one fifth of senses that feed our brains information, is also the most nostalgic of the senses. Just think—what can conjure up memories better and faster than any other sense? Particular examples that spring to my mind is Old People Smell which permeated the house and car of my best friends’ grandmother, which nevertheless spelt out only good times (and which I have since discovered is the smell of mothballs). There are specific aromas that speak with infallible eloquence of the new Barbie doll’s shampoo on that brilliant Christmas morning, and the lingering excitement of candles which hint at the gentle glow of Christmas suppers. And if your friends are the sort who stick to one fragrance, that same smell on anyone else is all wrong.

In the kitchen it is easy to be overpowered by the more obvious senses: taste, of course is forefront. It gives valuable clues as to cooking time, freshness of ingredients, nuances of flavouring, and of course is completed in the taste sensation for which we crave. Touch also is employed: the tongue as the most common tool, to detect what work still needs to be done, or where it has been overdone. Between one’s fingers too can be useful, and the give where a fork presses in.

On the topic of undervalued senses, sight is poorly put to use. Sight gives valuable insight concerning the freshness of raw matter in salads, the necessity to swirl a dressing perhaps, and especially, where weight-watchers are concerned, the fat content. Easy giveaways are the marbling of butter beneath your ‘healthy’ dose of vegetables, the consistency of the bread tells of the amount of oil used in baking it. Congealed lard on stored things doesn’t even need expansion, and the creamy texture of a casserole or pudding always speaks of either cream or condensed milk. I watch in horror as ladies who have chosen a vegetarian wrap for its ‘healthy’ reputation are presented with a floured pancake piled with oiled vegetables and swimming in yellow grease from the melted mozzarella, and eat as obliviously as if it were a celery stick. I am not against enjoyment of food, but if you are to take dietary requirements seriously, I cannot but say use your eyes.

Now for those like me who work in restaurants and are daily exposed to the sights and smells that lure us in as well as the customer, this is a curse and a blessing. A blessing to be privy to the private goings on, in order to make informed choices about the healthiest option, but a curse because we are seduced as easily as the customer, and there are never-ending bowls waiting to be washed that contain copious amounts of chocolate mixtures, remnants of casserole not quite cleared from the corners of a pot and off-cut pastries which find their way into our mouths. It hangs around our heads when the brownie batch and the fresh warm scones exit the oven and await eager fingers while they cool. How could we not be affected?

For what the eye will not render to view, smell probably can and at no cost to one’s waistline. For example, a beef pie will tell you in plain terms that there is beef in it, what sort of flavouring has been employed (whether wine, cream or herbs) and the eyesight will spot the telltale pooling blobs of oil that clearly mark the dish as a no-go. Curiousity is satisfied about a new pink mayonnaise: the sharp, tangy scent of mayonnaise countered with a tiny herbal blast of tomato. The taste of coffee, for example, is mainly smell. It is incredible how little of this unmistakable flavour is missed when one blocks one’s nose while drinking. In this instance, that the French use one word parfum to denote both smell and taste, does not seem like a very obscure occurrence.

In my opinion, a health-freak’s view in a butter kitchen, the importance of smell and sight above taste cannot be overstated. It detects the traitorous lagoons of oil in which the food was soaked, and the generous puddles of butter, and the pooling yellow grease of melted mozzarella.

There is a blind man who comes in with his wife and two children every now and then, and here is something to notice. He has a little baby, a moon-faced smiley thing - such a little delight to look at. And he cannot see her. And I tell you, not because he can’t see the sumptuous arrangement of the meal he’s about to eat, not that pity for the man who cannot view and appreciate the scope from a mountaintop, or the stroke of Da Vinci, but because he could not see the round moon-face of his shining little daughter that nearly broke my heart. All day I thought of it and this entry and could only think that we with all our senses are darned lucky little blighters.